Etymologies

Middle English pecemeale : pece, piece; see piece + -mele, by a fixed measure (from Old English -mǣlum, at a time, from dative pl. of mǣl, appointed time; see mē-2 in Indo-European roots).

(American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)

From Middle English pecemele, from pece ("piece") + mele (from Old English mǣlum ("at a time"), dative plural form of mǣl ("time, measure")), taking the place of Old English styċċemǣlum ("in pieces, bit by bit, piecemeal; to pieces, to bits; here and there, in different places; little by little, by degrees, gradually"); equivalent to piece +‎ -meal. (Wiktionary)

Examples

GH: In your new book Makeshift Metropolis, you state that architects should resist the urge to plan grand utopias and should instead embrace smaller interventions that fit more naturally into what you call piecemeal urbanism.

Also being read in piecemeal fashion is The Comics Journal 6: The Writers (edited by the erstwhile Tom Spurgeon), for which a more accurate title might have been "Gary Groth Browbeats Bewildered Comics Writers."

The distinctions and relationships between Pashtun tribal and ethnic identities, and between Pashtun tribalism and ethnicity, generally have been treated in piecemeal fashion and are yet to be fully dissected and analyzed.

At least, with a bevy of smaller authorities, controlled by Liberals bent on social engineering rather than efficiency, we can attempt to effect things locally, and we have the chance to reform their efficacy in piecemeal - precisely because their power remains distributed rather than concentrated.

Nonbacktracking subremovedalso known as a "greedy" subexpression). The subexpression is fully matched once, and then does not participate piecemeal in backtracking. (That is, the subexpression matches only strings that would be matched by the subexpression alone.)